Ian Bostridge, Sir Antonio Pappano

Ian Bostridge and Sir Antonio Pappano present a deeply personal song recital inspired by war, and the pity of war.

For Ian Bostridge, song recitals have never just been about the singing. Together with regular collaborator Sir Antonio Pappano, he’s woven songs by Mahler, Britten and Kurt Weill into a recital that goes far beyond a routine commemoration of the Great War.

It’s a typically compelling concept, from a singer with a powerful dramatic instinct for whom words and the meanings behind them matter just as much as the music. Revealingly, the programme centres on songs by George Butterworth and Rudi Stephan: British and German composers who both fell in battle. But Bostridge’s vision extends beyond poppies and war poems, in a concert that probes the enduring roots of human conflict itself.